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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28291110">Just In Cases</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/26stars/pseuds/26stars'>26stars</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Holiday Season fics [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>AoS Secret Santa 2020, Author! Mack, Author/Artist AU, Doesn't require knowledge of the movie, F/M, Foreign language acquistion, Love Actually AU, Painter! Elena, Referenced cheating (not by the main characters), rom com AU</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-24</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-11 00:06:52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,777</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28291110</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/26stars/pseuds/26stars</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Mack hadn't planned to spend the holidays down at his lake house, but he needed some air after finding out that he'd been cheated on. Unfortunately, he forgot that he'd scheduled the house to be repainted that month. With nowhere else to go, Mack is around while his contractor, and eventually just Francisco's cousin, Elena, work on the house. She and Mack don't speak each other's languages, but something new still manages to grow in the middle of winter. </p><p>A <em>Love Actually AU</em> for the AoS Secret Santa</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Alphonso "Mack" Mackenzie/Yo Yo Rodriguez</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Holiday Season fics [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/2089605</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Agents of SHIELD Secret Santa 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Just In Cases</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/independentalto/gifts">independentalto</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This doesn't really require having seen Love Actually, it's just a plot lifted right out of the movie. </p><p>Re, I hope you like it!</p><p>To all readers who don't know Spanish, I have every intention of making those hover-over translations sometime next week, but I just didn't have time to pull it together before posting tonight. Hop on over to google translate if needed!</p><p>HUGE thanks to Florchis for her Spanish beta-read!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mack knew it wasn’t necessarily the healthiest thing, running away from his city just as the holiday season began. But getting cheated on usually made people behave a bit out of the ordinary. As a writer, he really shouldn’t have been so cliché, but clichés were clichés for a reason—it was just a fancier word for a pattern or habit, one that people came to expect over time. <em>When A happens, B follows…</em></p><p>So, screw it. Leaving town and running off to your personal hideout after finding out your girlfriend of four years was banging your <em>brother</em>…in this case, the cliché felt like the only thing he had the strength to do right now.</p><p>Getting cheated on <em>sucked.</em></p><p>At least he wasn’t falling into the ‘crazy murderous ex’ cliché…</p><p>The personal hideout in question was a nice little cabin on one of the lakes of Texas, a property that had once belonged to a grandparent and was now his. He wasn’t a boater, though he liked the challenge of fixing them up and occasionally tinkered on his grandfather’s ancient boat in the garage. He’d never been much for fishing either, and some would say the property was a bit wasted on him. But as the only progeny willing to keep up the place and not just sell it off after they’d passed away, Mack had put the royalties of his first few books into making the house livable again, and then the next few books had been written on its deck, overlooking the lake. The typewriter that he liked to do rough drafts on was on site there, and he made semi-annual getaways there anyway to get work done, away from the distractions of friends and family in Chicago.</p><p>‘Creepy writer in the cabin in the woods’ was another cliché, but he couldn’t do anything about that one.</p><p>Again, clichés were cliché for a reason.</p><p>Mack arrived at his place early afternoon that Tuesday, carrying in a load of groceries before he came back for his duffle bag. His decision to come down had been so sudden that he hadn’t had time to notify the service he usually used to come give the place a quick cleaning before his arrival, so after putting the milk and beer in the fridge, he set to work with a rag and a bottle of Lysol in the kitchen; dusted the living room, dining room, and office with a bottle of pledge; and then put clean linens on his bed and ran clean water through all the taps for a few minutes. By the time he was ready to start thinking about dinner, he was mostly out of energy, so he called in an order from the local pizza place and set an alarm on his phone to go pick it up in half an hour. This done, he opened his phone and made another call to his agent.</p><p>“Hi Phil. Wanted to let you know I’ll be at the lake house for the next couple of weeks at least, taking a little personal retreat. Hoping to finish that next book while I’m down here, but mark me ‘out of office’ for anyone trying to get ahold of me this month. Hope you have a good month—see you after Christmas.”</p><p>Half an hour later, he went to pick up his pizza. Three beers and a few TV movies later, he fell asleep on the couch with his shirt on the floor and the pizza box still open on the coffee table.</p><p><em>Sad sack who got cheated on isn’t even trying anymore</em>, he had the presence of mind to think to himself as he fell asleep.</p><p>Clichés sucked.</p><p>~</p><p>Mack had no intention of waking up at a decent hour the next morning, but when he returned to consciousness at the sound of someone unlocking his front door, it certainly got him on his feet quickly.</p><p>He had a bat in his hand as he approached the front door, and thankfully he recognized the person on the other side immediately, though she seemed less than thrilled at the sight of him brandishing a weapon.</p><p>“Mr. Mackenzie!” the woman shrieked, immediately taking in his shirtless appearance and raising her brows. “I thought you wouldn’t be here! You said this would be a good time to get the painting done!”</p><p>Mack, already lowering the bat, looked past his house helper and saw a second car in the driveway—a pickup truck where a man and woman were unloading cans of paint and stacking them on the driveway.</p><p>
  <em>The painting…</em>
</p><p>“The painting…” he groaned, covering his face with his hand. “I totally forgot.”</p><p>A couple of months ago in warmer times, when he and Nicole had been here for their last getaway together (of course, he didn’t know at the time that it would be their last…), they had finally settled on the colors to repaint all the rooms and the exterior of the house, which hadn’t seen a fresh coat of paint since at least the nineties. They had set it up with a local contractor, put him in direct contact with the cleaning service that kept his house key, and agreed that it was fine to get the project done in December, since he never spent the holidays at the lake house…</p><p>Well. In ordinary circumstances…</p><p>“Do you want us to reschedule the project, sir?” the contractor, Francisco, said as he approached the front door with a can of paint in each hand. “You’ll have to pay a fee, but we’ve got some open time in January when we could come back and do it…”</p><p>“No, it’s fine,” Mack said, shaking his head and waving the man off. “I’ll be holed up inside working on the book most of the time. I can just rotate rooms…”</p><p>“All right then. Why don’t you open the garage, and we’ll go ahead and stack the paint and other supplies in there,” Francisco suggested, and Mack suddenly became aware that the other woman waiting in the driveway was staring at him. Quickly Mack backed away from the door, headed for the living room to grab his shirt on the way to the garage.</p><p>Once he was properly dressed, had sent the housekeeper on her way, and had helped Francisco and his worker move all the paint into the garage, the contractor had a quick conversation with the woman in what sounded like Spanish.</p><p>“All right, we’ll start with the outside today then,” he eventually said, gesturing to the yard as the woman picked up one of the largest buckets and headed that direction, not seeming phased by the weight. “Should be good weather the next couple of days. She works fast and makes me faster—we’ll see if we can get it done before the wind starts blowing.”</p><p>Mack left them to it and headed back inside, silently berating himself for forgetting such a huge commitment.</p><p>Kind of like his ex-girlfriend did…</p><p>~</p><p>Mack didn’t make much progress on his book that afternoon, though he did take some time to fill up the bulletin board in his office with notecards full of notes and plot points, mapping out the story and reassessing what wasn’t done yet…</p><p>Francisco and the woman took off at lunch, but they were back within the hour and had the largest side of the house done before sundown. Mack put in the effort to make a real dinner that evening, one with three food groups, and he made himself fall sleep in the bed that night and get up at a decent hour the next morning.</p><p>Which was probably for the best, because Francisco and his friend were there bright and early that day, already at work on the house exterior by the time Mack made it out of bed.</p><p>“Looking good,” he commented when he went out to inspect their progress after a shower, bringing them each a cup of coffee. “You guys are fast.”</p><p>“It’s all her—she’s the one always in a hurry,” Francisco said, then translated for the woman. She rolled her eyes at him and said something back in Spanish that made Francisco laugh.</p><p>“This is Elena, by the way,” he said, gesturing to her. Mack shook her hand with a smile, noticing for the first time what beautiful eyes she had underneath her paint-splattered baseball cap.</p><p>“I’m Mack,” he said, and the woman repeated his name.</p><p>It sounded nice on her voice.</p><p>“She’s my cousin, just visiting for a couple of months,” Francisco added. “But she got bored sitting around our place getting pestered by my mom and kids all day, so she always tags along on painting projects.”</p><p>“Where are you from?” Mack asked, but Francisco answered for her.</p><p>“We’re Colombian. This is her first time to the US. Still new to an English environment.”</p><p>The two accepted the coffee and all three of them got back to work. The two disappeared at lunch again that day, and it took a while for Mack to notice into the afternoon that he hadn’t heard their car get back yet. When he went out to check the yard, however, he found Elena perched on a ladder by herself, working on the trim on the side from the day before.</p><p>“<em>Francisco tuvo que ir a otra obra para ayudar a sus trabajadores</em>, <em>un hombre está herido</em>” she said when she saw him, and Mack spread his hands helplessly.</p><p>“Sorry, I don’t know much Spanish.”</p><p>The woman appeared to understand his meaning, and she gestured towards the road.</p><p>“Francisco…go…”</p><p>Guessing at her meaning, Mack nodded.</p><p>“Okay, well hope he can come back soon. Let me know if you need a hand with anything.”</p><p>The woman gave him a blank look but nodded anyway, going back to her painting. Mack shrugged and headed back inside.</p><p>He never did hear Francisco’s truck come back, but when he went to check on Elena near dinner time, the ladder was folded up in the garage, the trim was done, and she was gone.</p><p>~</p><p>The next day, Francisco was back, but he knocked on the door to talk to Mack as soon as he and Elena arrived.</p><p>“Sorry I took off yesterday—we had an accident at one of my other sites, and a foreman broke his leg,” he explained. “I’m going to have to go pick up the slack over there for the next couple of days until another foreman finishes up at his site—are you good with Elena working on the painting by herself until then?”</p><p>“Sure, whatever works for you all,” Mack said, glancing at Elena, who appeared to be trying to follow the conversation but looked a bit lost. “Tell her she can tell me if she needs help with anything, even if it’s just someone to hold the ladder.”</p><p>Francisco stayed long enough to make sure Elena was clear on which colors went where in the house, and then he was off. Mack sat in his office and tried to pretend to focus on his book, but he caught himself wondering more than once if Elena was doing all right out there by herself…</p><p>He needn’t have worried though, because by the time he broke for lunch and wandered outside, Elena had already finished another side of the exterior and had started on the fourth.</p><p>“Man, you <em>are</em> fast,” he commented, flashing her a smile.</p><p>Elena, who was sitting on an overturned bucket eating from a brown paper sack, gave him a smug look.</p><p>“<em>Algunos jefes piensan que ir rápido significa que no lo haces bien. Pero puedes mirar de cerca, siempre pinto bien</em>.”</p><p>Mack smiled even though he didn’t know what she said.</p><p>“My mom used to wear me out if I cleaned the house too fast, saying I couldn’t have done it well, but I always did a good job.”</p><p>Since the weather was so good that day, he moved his typewriter out to the deck overlooking the lake to work for the afternoon. Elena was working on the same side, effortlessly turning the faded-blue exterior a welcoming shade of gold.</p><p>For some reason, it felt good just to know that she was there.</p><p>At the end of the day, Mack had already started working on a dish for dinner when Elena knocked on the patio door.</p><p>“<em>Terminé con el exterior,”</em> she said when he opened it, gesturing to the wall she’d been working on.<em> “Empezaré el interior mañana. Ya empaqué todo, para que pueda cerrar su garaje</em>.”</p><p>“Did you finish the outside?” Mack asked in surprise. “I want to see.”</p><p>He followed her outside and she gestured proudly towards the last side of the house—the sun was already setting, but his house looked so refreshed.</p><p>“You did a great job,” Mack said, smiling at her. “Will you start on the inside tomorrow?”</p><p>Elena shrugged at him.</p><p>“<em>Me voy. Hasta mañana.”</em></p><p>She started walking up the driveway, her bag in hand, and Mack expected to see her stop at the main road and wait for someone to come pick her up. When she turned on the main road and kept walking, however, Mack quickly ducked inside to grab his keys and then cranked up the engine of his car.</p><p>Elena was walking quickly but hadn’t gotten far by the time he overtook her on the road.</p><p>“Here, get in,” he called through the open window as she continued walking along the shoulder. “You shouldn’t be walking. I’ll take you wherever you need to be.”</p><p>“<em>Está bien, camino rápido. No necesito que me lleven. Gracias</em>.” He could tell she was trying to defer, waving him off, but Mack shook his head.</p><p>“People don’t always drive at a safe speed on this road—it’s not safe,” he insisted.</p><p>As if to prove his point, a motorcycle whipped around the bend ahead of them, blasting past his car with a roar. Mack slowed the car down as Elena finally stopped walking, giving him a tired look.</p><p>“<em>No sé comó va a terminar esto</em>,” she muttered, finally reaching for the door handle. “<em>Aunque supongo que si planeabas asesinarme, podrías haberlo hecho antes de que tu coche se viera involucrado ...”</em></p><p>With hand gestures involved, it was relatively painless to drive her to a condo in the nearest town. He dropped her off at the entrance to an apartment complex when she started to climb out of the car while he was still insisting he could take her to her building.</p><p>“<em>Conduces como mi abuela; podría haber caminado más rápido que esto</em>,” Elena said as she got out of the car. “<em>Pero gracias</em>.”</p><p>“<em>De nada</em>,” Mack responded, making her give him a surprised double-take.</p><p>“That’s about all I’ve got, sorry,” he said with a shrug, making her smile.</p><p>“Goodbye, Mack,” she said in English, closing the door and walking away without looking back.</p><p>~</p><p>The next day, Elena knocked on the door at an early hour, and when Mack let her in, she looked around the house.</p><p>“<em>Puedo comenzar con un dormitorio para que esté seco al anochecer,”</em> she said, pointing towards the back area of the house where the bedrooms are.</p><p>“Yeah, maybe if you start with a bedroom, it will be dry by evening,” Mack suggested, leading her to the last room on the hall.</p><p>The master bedroom had always been a lilac purple, probably a color his grandmother had picked herself. There was once a wallpaper border along the top, which Mack had removed himself on the last visit, and Elena looked passively around the space.</p><p>“<em>Iré a buscar un paño. Mueve todo lo que necesitas hoy.”</em></p><p>“I’ll just move out the things I might need later, okay?” Mack called after her.</p><p>When Elena returned with a drop-cloth, he helped her pull all the furniture to the middle of the room and spread the cloth over it, tucking it against all the edges to cover the Berber carpet on the floor. She had brought in one of the smaller cans of paint too, and Mack confirmed that it was the right color for the room—a deep teal that reminded him of Lake Michigan, a lake that Texas’s could only dream of imitating.</p><p>Mack went to work in his office for most of the morning, and since the bedroom was at the end of the hall, he couldn’t really excuse walking by to check on Elena’s progress throughout the time. Around noon, he went to the kitchen and reheated some of the dish he’d made the night before, then after thinking for a moment, reheated another plate.</p><p>“Can I interest you in some curry?” he said, poking his head through with the plate in hand. He was surprised to see most of the trim already done, and Elena was already rollering a second wall.</p><p>“<em>Huele bien</em>,” Elena said, barely pausing in her work.</p><p>“Would you like some?” He held the plate out to her, but when she seemed to process his meaning, she shook her free hand in deferral.</p><p>“<em>No necesito, traje almuerzo</em>.” She pointed to the brown paper sack that she’d set on the nightstand.</p><p>“It’s okay, I have a lot,” Mack said, trying one more time.</p><p>The woman looked at him for a long moment, then climbed off her stepladder.</p><p>
  <em>“Sólo porque parece que podrías llorar si vuelvo a decir que no.”</em>
</p><p>Mack smiled as she took the plate, then started to sit down on the stepladder to eat.</p><p>“No, come on, join me at the table,” he said, gesturing her towards the dining room.</p><p>The woman sighed, looking rather put upon, but she got up and followed him.</p><p>“<em>Tienes suerte de ser guapo</em>.”</p><p>There obviously wasn’t much conversation while they ate on opposite sides of the small dining table, but after Elena had eaten several bites, she pointed at the plate and said something while giving him a thumbs-up. Mack beamed.</p><p>“Thank you,” he said.</p><p>“<em>De nada</em>,” Elena responded with a wink.</p><p>She took her empty plate to the kitchen when she was done eating, but Mack shooed her away from the sink when she moved to wash it.</p><p>“No, I invited you to eat, that doesn't mean you have dish duty,” while she said “<em>Tú cocinaste, así que yo lavo los platos...”</em></p><p>The back and forth continued for a minute before Elena finally threw up her hands.</p><p>
  <em>“Bien, tú lavas, yo trabajo. Qué pareja haríamos.”</em>
</p><p>The bedroom was done well before her usual quitting time, so Elena knocked on his open office door that afternoon.</p><p>
  <em>“¿Quizás debería hacer el baño ahora?”</em>
</p><p>“How about the bathroom?” Mack suggested, and the woman shrugged, heading back to the bedroom to collect the drop cloth and painter’s tape.</p><p>
  <em>“Sí, empezaré a pintar el baño. Aunque puede que no haya hecho mucho hoy ...”</em>
</p><p>She didn’t get much beyond removing outlet and switch plate covers and taping all the surfaces before it was time for her to head home. When Mack heard her packing up her things for the day, moving all her equipment back to the garage, he quickly went out to catch her.</p><p>“Let me drive you home,” he said, holding up his keys.</p><p>This time, she only said 'no' once before shrugging and getting into the car.</p><p>~</p><p>It took two more days of this (<em>this </em>being shared lunches, slow communication, and those sweet drives at the end of the day) before Elena had finished the other back rooms and was ready to start on the office, so Mack had to move his workspace out to the dining room before helping her unload and stack all his books in the hallway, then move out the shelves…</p><p>“<em>Ya suponía que eras escritor,”</em> Elena mutters as she stacks another dozen books, “<em>pero ¿por qué tantos libros?</em>”</p><p>“I know I shouldn’t have this many books, especially at a place I don’t live full time, but most of them belonged to my grandparents, and I always had this dream of reading everything they ever read.”</p><p>The furniture moving itself took the better part of an hour, but when Elena went to fetch the can of the selected color for the room, she approached him with a wrinkled brow.</p><p><em>“¿Estás seguro de que quieres la oficina en este tono de verde?” </em>she said, looking worried.<em> “Va a hacer que la habitación se vea muy oscura. Y no combina bien con este color de alfombra.”</em></p><p>“Yes, that’s the color for the office. You got it,” Mack confirmed with a thumbs up, but Elena just shook her head.</p><p>“<em>Realmente creo que deberías elegir algo más ligero. Este tono podría quedar bien en la sala de estar o en la cocina, pero ...”</em></p><p>Mack held out his hands helplessly, and Elena sighed. After a moment, she held up one finger, then disappeared back into the garage. When she came back, she had a dry paint tray with a dallop of the green and the yellow from the exterior on it, and she set the tray on the counter between them.</p><p>
  <em>“Mira, si le agrego un poco de pintura dorada exterior a ese verde ...”</em>
</p><p>With her fingers, she mixed the two together, and they blended into a muted sage green.</p><p>
  <em>“¿No es un color mucho mejor? No es demasiado brillante, se vería muy bien en esa habitación.”</em>
</p><p>“That’s a really nice color,” Mack said admiringly. “It’s much brighter. Would look really nice there.”</p><p>The woman was looking expectantly at him, waiting for an answer.</p><p>“Can you mix those two colors and get that one?” Mack asked. “Do you have the equipment?”</p><p>He tried to pantomime the actions, and she seemed to understand, because she pulled out her phone.</p><p>
  <em>“Francisco, ¿podrías traer un balde limpio y una batidora de pintura?”</em>
</p><p>He could tell she was talking to her cousin, and within the hour, another workman had dropped off a fresh bucket and a paint mixer.</p><p>~</p><p>The office was finished with its fresh green color the next day, meaning it was time for Elena to start on the living/dining room, so Mack spent part of the morning helping her move furniture again before carrying his typewriter out on the deck to work for the day. The book was coming along nicely, looking to possibly be done by Christmas if he could keep this pace up. He had a thick stack of typed sheets on his right hand weighted down by his coffee cup and a clean ream of paper on his left, the air was pleasantly crisp without being cold, and he got on such a writing roll that he didn’t even notice it was noon until Elena came out on the porch, bringing with her a plate.</p><p>“<em>Como agradecimiento por los almuerzos,”</em> she said as she set the plate down next to his papers. <em>“</em><em>La mamá de Francisco hace las mejores empanadas.”</em></p><p>“What’s this?” Mack asked, looking up at her in surprise, and by Elena’s expression, he guessed that he was making her repeat herself.</p><p>“Empanadas,” she said, pointing at the plate. “Eat. <em>No has comido esta mañana</em>.”</p><p>“Thank you,” Mack said quickly, smiling and reaching for one of the foil-wrapped items. “Smells good.”</p><p>Elena didn’t stick around to watch his reaction to the food, but if she had, she’d have seen the transcendent expression take over his face. Several minutes later, when he went into the kitchen with the empty plate and his coffee mug for a refill, she was sitting on the dropcloth-covered sofa, sipping from her water bottle.</p><p>“Amazing,” he said, pointing to the empty plate and hoping his big smile got the meaning across.</p><p>She smiled back, looking smug, and he assumed the message was received.</p><p>“Looks good in here too,” he said, gesturing around the half-finished room, which she was painting the same teal as the master bedroom. “That gray was probably white when it was first put up…”</p><p>Elena suddenly bolted up from her place, looking worriedly out the patio window.</p><p>“<em>¿Eso es tu libro</em>?” she gasped, and Mack followed her gaze.</p><p>Out on the back lawn, a stream of papers was blowing from the stack on the table, flying across the backyard on the wind.</p><p>“<em>Shit</em>!” he yelled, lunging out the back door.</p><p>He grabbed the remaining stack of paper on the table and shoved it under the typewriter first, and by the time he’d done that, Elena was already out in the backyard too, charging across the lawn after the furthest-flying sheets of paper.</p><p>“I’ll meet you in the middle!” Mack called to her, jumping off the porch and catching one sheet beneath his foot, snatching it up and scurrying after the next. It felt a bit like chasing chickens as the sheets ran from him every time he got closer, but Elena had already kicked up a trail of dust on the dry grass bolting ahead of the cloud of papers. She had a small pile of crumpled sheets in her hands by the time she was close to the house again, several more than Mack had managed to catch.</p><p>“<em>Hay un hoja arriba en el árbol</em>,” she said, pointing at the oak near the house, and Mack saw a paper stuck in the upper branches.</p><p>“Just leave it. It’s not worth it,” he responded with a  shake of his head. “Thanks for catching those. Let’s just take these inside and see what the damage is.”</p><p>Since the main room was chaotic with moved furniture and paint supplies, Mack took the pile to the hallway (after transferring his typewriter and the rest of the pages back into the dining room) and started laying out the sheets in order as best as he could. Besides the page that was stuck in the tree, there seemed to be at least seven other pages that had disappeared entirely.</p><p><em>“No tendrías esta problema si escribieras en la computadora de la oficina ...”</em> Elena muttered as she helped.</p><p>“I really should write on a computer…” Mack grumbled to himself.</p><p>“<em>Apuesto a que eres uno de esos escritores a los que les gusta la estética de la máquina de escribir ...”</em> Elena said, jerking her thumb at his typewriter, which certainly seemed to be staring judgmentally him at the moment.</p><p>“I know there’s a stereotype that authors who use typewriters are pretentious, but it’s just such a great feeling…” he sighed. “That’s all right. No more patio writing today. I’ll stack these up and try to figure what’s missing…”</p><p>Elena went back to painting and Mack took the pile to the dining room table, attempting to fill in the gaps of the story that <em>had</em> felt very fresh only a few minutes ago. In typical writer fashion, it suddenly seemed impossible to summon the words and plot that he’d cranked out effortlessly this morning, so he just filled some parts with brackets of what <em>should </em> be there. Somewhere in the middle, Elena started a fresh pot of coffee and brought him a cup of it when it was ready.</p><p>
  <em>“Lo siento mucho. Siento que esto es mi culpa.”</em>
</p><p>“Thanks for the coffee,” Mack said, smiling and rubbing his face tiredly. “I was so distracted by how good those empanadas were that I couldn’t wait to tell you.”</p><p><em>“Deben haber sido muy buenas empanadas si te hicieron olvidar por completo el trabajo de una vida,” </em>Elena said, not immediately moving back to her painting like she usually did.</p><p>The just stared at each other for a moment, and Mack guessed this was the first time he’d seen Elena look unsure about anything.</p><p>“Who made them?” He pointed at the abandoned foil wrappers from earlier. She quirked a brow, so he pantomimed cooking and then pointed at her with a questioning gaze, which made her shake her head.</p><p>
  <em>“La mamá de Francisco, mi tía.”</em>
</p><p>“Well, tell Tía they were delicious.” Mack rubbed his belly, and Elena laughed.</p><p>“<em>Si le digo, insistirá en hacerte pasar cuando me dejes,”</em> Elena pantomimed driving, making Mack smile.</p><p>“You know, that’s my favorite part of the day, driving you,” he said softly. It felt safe to admit when he knew she couldn’t understand his words.</p><p>Elena gave him a small smile in return. “<em>Esa es la parte más triste de mi día, dejarte</em>.”</p><p>The moment ended abruptly when her phone rang, and Elena went to find it in her jacket pocket. Mack turned back to his typewriter and attempted to write, suddenly realizing that if Elena finished the living room today… she might not be here tomorrow.</p><p>Incidentally, Elena seemed to think the room needed a second coat, Francisco told Mack when Elena put him on the phone a moment later, and he smiled, wondering if maybe they did understand each other, just a little.</p><p>~</p><p>Two days later, Francisco arrived with Elena in the morning to pack up their equipment and the remaining paint.</p><p>“What do you think of her work?” he asked as he walked around the house with Mack, inspecting the freshly-painted rooms.</p><p>“No complaints. And she was very fast.”</p><p>“That’s her thing,” Francisco said, sounding proud.</p><p>Elena was still loading the truck while Mack looked over the invoice in the kitchen and paid Francisco through his phone.</p><p>“You should put her on all your painting jobs like that in the future,” Mack recommended. “She’s got a great eye for color. Convinced me to try out a color she created in the office, and I love it.”</p><p>“Oh, she’s an artist,” Francisco said easily as he folded up the papers Mack had just signed. “Didn’t she tell you?”</p><p>Mack was shocked, though he guessed he shouldn’t be.</p><p>“She may have said so, and I just didn’t understand her,” he shrugged. “But yeah, send her to all your painting projects in the future—homeowners will be better for it.”</p><p>“Would be nice, but she’s actually headed back to Colombia not long after the holiday,” Francisco said, moving towards the garage door. “I’ll pass your compliment along though. Good doing business with you, sir!”</p><p>The garage door slammed, and a moment later, Mack heard the truck starting up. He hurried out to the garage just as the truck started reversing up his driveway. Elena was in the front seat, but she smiled as he came out into the sunlight. They were already too far away to hear him, so Mack just waved. Inside the car, Elena waved back, still smiling.</p><p>And then the car backed onto the main road, and she was gone.</p><p>Mack stood there in the garage for a long minute after, reeling from the suddenness of her departure and just feeling really…stupid. A million unsaid things hung in the air over his head, things he wouldn’t have told her in front of Francisco but couldn’t have told her without a translator anyway…</p><p>He went slowly back into the house, staring around the space that she had completely transformed in a matter of days. The colors were bright, and yet the house suddenly felt so dull, now that he was the only person in it again. He looked from the dining table where they’d eaten lunches to the lawn where they’d chased pages to the hall where they’d stacked his books…</p><p>In this office with the color she’d created, his old typewriter glowered at him reproachfully. He didn’t feel like writing, so he took his phone out onto the back porch where he had the best cell service.</p><p>“Hi Phil. Wanted to let you know that the book is almost done, but I think I’m going to stay down here a little bit longer. There’s something I’m trying to figure out…”</p><p>~</p><p>He made himself sit on it for two days before he went for it. He’d written out the monologue, memorized the words, and had gathered any courage he could find in himself before putting on the nicest shirt he had at the lake house and driving into town. It was the day before Christmas Eve, and for all he knew, Elena and her family would be going out of town for the holiday, so it had to be today.</p><p>He found the complex he’d been dropping her off at, pulling into a visitor’s spot and climbing out of his car. According to the complex’s posted map, there were fourteen buildings, with eight units each.</p><p>Mack walked straight up to the first one and started knocking on doors.</p><p>It took him fifty-one awkward encounters to find the right place. A young teenager with dark hair opened the door, and Mack repeated his single-minded phrase.</p><p>“Is Elena here?”</p><p>The boy narrowed his eyes. “Who are you?”</p><p>“I’m her…” Mack hesitated. “I’m a friend of Francisco’s.”</p><p>The older one eyed him suspiciously, but all of a sudden, Elena <em>was</em> there, appearing from the room behind the boy, wiping her hands on a rag.</p><p><em>“¿Quién es</em>?” she called to the teenager, but then, seeing Mack, she paused. “<em>¿Por qué estás aquí?”</em></p><p>Mack took a deep breath, found the starting place for the monologue he’d memorized, and began.</p><p>“Elena,” he began slowly. “<em>Esperaba que podría hablarnos</em>.”</p><p>She made a surprised face, and the teenager between them scoffed loudly, snickering at Mack’s Spanish (or maybe because he guessed what this was about). Elena shushed him and said something in rapid Spanish that sent him scurrying, then stepped out onto the porch with Mack and shut the door.</p><p><em>“¿Qué pasa</em>?” she said expectantly, propping one hand on her hip.</p><p>Mack bit his lip and then put his proverbial cards on the table.</p><p>
  <em>“Vine aquí para preguntar si ... podríamos volver a vernos. Francisco me dijo que regresarás a Colombia después de Navidad, pero sentí que necesitaba contarte más antes de que te fueras. Y sé que nunca llegamos a conocernos realmente, pero es Navidad, así que me preguntaba si, antes de que te vayas, estarías dispuesto a salir a cenar conmigo.”</em>
</p><p>He held up his phone. “<em>Y porque ahora también recuerdo que Google Translate es una cosa, con suerte podremos hablar más entre nosotros esta vez.”</em></p><p>Elena had been watching him with an indulgent expression the whole time, but now she laughed a little, rocking back on her heels.</p><p>“<em>¿Te tomaste tanto trabajo para invitarme a salir?</em>” she said, and Mack started to open his phone to type in what she said, but she put her hand on his, stopping him.</p><p>“Okay,” she said in English with a wide smile. “Tomorrow?”</p><p>Mack smiled, feeling like the weight was tumbling off his shoulders.</p><p>“Tomorrow,” he repeated, smiling back. “Okay. Tomorrow it is.”</p><p>Elena smiled, then rocked up on her toes and kissed his cheek.</p><p>“See you tomorrow,” she said as she turned to go back inside. “<em>Y veremos si puedo mejorar tu español antes de que termine la cita.”</em></p>
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